An Irish Love Song

I was reading my copy of “A Quick Guide to Customs & Etiquette…Culture Smart! Britain” (a congratulatory/farewell gift from my brother) when I came across Londonderry- which I didn’t even know was in Northern Ireland (no kidding)- which in turn reminded me of Londonderry Air . I used to play the tune on piano when I was about 8 or 9, I think, but now I realise that that not only did I not know that it’s actually an Irish folk tune AND the anthem of Northern Ireland, I don’t even remember the melody!

So I got to Wiki-ing it and Youtube-ing it and this is what I found and I am moved. It’s stuck in my head now and won’t go away.

First one’s a piano trio and the second’s by Reading University’s Flute Choir (!!) and third’s by a symphonic band. Absolutely charming.

Apparently folk tunes usually have various versions of lyrics set to them and this is my favourite- An Irish Love Song by Katherine Tynan Hinkson (Yes I credit all this to Wiki! Now anyone can be smartypants teehee).

“It wasn’t called the Londonderry Air in print until 1894 when this was the name given it as the tune accompanying Irish Love Song, written by Katherine Hinkson, in a book edited by Alfred Perceval Graves called Irish Song Book.”–

Would God I were the tender apple blossom

That floats and falls from off the twisted bough

To lie and faint within your silken bosom

Within your silken bosom as that does now.

Or would I were a little burnish’d apple

For you to pluck me, gliding by so cold

While sun and shade you robe of lawn will dapple

Your robe of lawn, and you hair’s spun gold.

Yea, would to God I were among the roses

That lean to kiss you as you float between

While on the lowest branch a bud uncloses

A bud uncloses, to touch you, queen.

Nay, since you will not love, would I were growing

A happy daisy, in the garden path

That so your silver foot might press me going

Might press me going even unto death.

And, like how I am fascinated with any beautiful verses about death, O Danny Boy is a close second:

_________________________
A few weeks previously Ellen Terry [an English stage actress-from COVENTRY!] died and, it seems, the Londonderry Air was played at her funeral. Terry had written a verse inside a book, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, followed by a note indicating – “I should wish my children, relatives and friends to observe this when I die.” The verse reads

No funeral gloom, my dears, when I am gone,
Corpse-gazing, tears, black raiment, graveyard grimness.
Think of me withdrawn into the dimness,
Yours still, you mine.
Remember all the best of our past moments and forget the rest.
And so to where I wait, come gently on.

This verse was pinned to the gate of Terry’s house as she lay waiting to be cremated. Her wishes were carried out; no blinds were drawn and no one wore black.
__________________________

And then this got me thinking about a verse from Isaiah I read about sometime back in the Correspondent’s Diary section of the Economist:

Man that is born of a woman
Hath but a short time to live,
And is full of misery.
He cometh up, and is cut down like a flow’r;
He fleeth as it were a shadow,
And ne’er continueth in one stay.

The whole series of short but thought-provoking writings about death and the afterlife here – Click.

Things like these make me want to believe in the afterlife, really- but is there one or not? How do we know it’s not merely beautiful manifestations of human desire to believe that there is more to life that is awaiting us than suffering and sorrow and physical pain? It’s so easy to be trapped by your own disillusionment and resignation and then eventually come to the point where you justify your entire life by saying This simply cannot be it and then I refuse to believe that this is it.

And then I think sometimes when people can no longer keep in their frustrations it all overflows and transforms into expressions of unspeakable beauty…and that’s how you have awesome paintings and architecture.

1 comment

I have GOT to come back and read this post, and watch the videos, but I seem to have lost sound on streaming video, and they stop every 5 seconds. So time to reboot, eventually, when I have closed down my 100 tabs.

I love cathedrals and when I was in the UK used to say that if I left London I’d only live in a cathedral town. They feel so nice.